Update: CyanogenMod says owner hijacked domain, demanded $10,000

Android enthusiasts trying to reach CyanogenMod.com, the website for the popular community-maintained firmware of the same name, will find themselves staring at a blank filler site as of today. As has been detailed in a blog post up on the new CyanogenMod.org, the owner of the original domain (one Ahmet Deveci) name shut the site down after he was discovered impersonating CyanogenMod founder Steve "Cyanogen" Kondik for the purpose of cutting referral deals with other sites.

When confronted and asked to surrender the keys amicably, Deveci responded by demanding $10,000 for the domain, an amount that the team "won't (and can't) pay." CyanogenMod team members were able to reclaim ownership of the project's Twitter and Facebook accounts, but upon being locked out of the system Deveci promptly deleted the domain's DNS records, rendering the site unreachable.

"We don’t like how this played out, and we are deeply hurt," the team said in its statement. "Likewise, we are deeply saddened at the confusion this may have caused the community. We will continue to be open about the what, when, [and] how, but unfortunately, we may never know the ‘why’—though greed comes to mind. The team itself has not made a profit off of CM and that is not our goal. But to have one of our own betray the community like this is beyond our comprehension."

9to5Google reports that Deveci originally donated the domain name to the team at some point after the domain's registration in August of 2009.

For now, the CyanogenMod team has opened up shop on CyanogenMod.org and has initiated ICANN's domain name dispute process to reclaim its old URL. The team will be pursuing legal action against Deveci to regain control of the domain if necessary. Until then, the team has warned that all CyanogenMod.com e-mail addresses are currently out of its control, and it is asking anyone who entered into a referral deal with the imposter to contact Kondik directly to help build its legal case.

Update: Soon after publication, Ahmet Deveci claimed on his Twitter page that events had been "misinterpreted" and that he did indeed intend to transfer the CyanogenMod.com domain name to Steve Kondik without incident.

"No money has ever been extorted from CM nor will it ever be," Deveci told Ars. Ahmet claims that Kondik once asked him how much he would be willing to sell the domain for. "I replied as a joke and said $10K. He didn't even reply after that, he went offline, and simply started changing all my logins access and passwords."

In response to the claims that he was impersonating Kondik to cut referral deals with other sites, Deveci also claims that there was a misunderstanding. Someone claiming to be from the Cyanogenmod team reached out to N2Acards, a site that sells microSD cards for running stock Android on Barnes & Noble's Nook tablets, and tried to collect money from them. "The guys on the team just assumed it was me because I assisted N2A by placing forum links on our forum, in return for their donations," Deveci told Ars, "All agreed and above board."

As of this writing, Deveci claims that the CyanogenMod.com domain has "practically" been transferred to the ownership of Kondik and the CyanogenMod team. Fifteen minutes after we spoke with Deveci, Kondik's Twitter account confirmed this development.

"Why would I want to make money from a non-profit free organisation that I have so much passion in?" asked Deveci. "Go figure."

Andrew Cunningham
Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Twitter@AndrewWrites